Move citing "unprofessional reporting which escalated sectarian tension" comes as funerals are held for slain soldiers.

[photo]: Funeral was held on Sunday for five soldiers slain after the deaths of 170 protesters at the hands of security forces

Iraq has suspended the licences of 10 satellite television channels, including Al Jazeera, for promoting violence and sectarianism, according to a senior official at the country's media watchdog.

Sunday's announcement came as the country held funerals for five soldiers killed by armed men during anti-government protests in the mainly Sunni city of Ramadi, just hours after authorities said they had arrested three suspects.

"We took a decision to suspend the licence of some satellite channels that adopted language encouraging violence and sectarianism," Mujahid Abu al-Hail of the Communications and Media Commission (CMC) said on Sunday.

"It means stopping their work in Iraq and their activities, so they cannot cover events in Iraq or move around."

The CMC said it believes that "the rhetoric and substance coverage" by Baghdad, Al Sharqiyah, Al Sharqiyah News, Babylonian, Salah al-Din, Anwar 2, al Tagheer, Fallujah, Al Jazeera and Al Gharbiyah, all TV channels that operate in the region, were "provocative, misleading and exaggerated with the objective of disturbing the civil and democratic process".

Responding to the accusation, Al Jazeera said in a statement: "We are astonished by this development. We cover all sides of the stories in Iraq, and have done for many years. The fact that so many channels have been hit all at once though suggests this is an indiscriminate decision.

"We urge the authorities to uphold freedom for the media to report the important stories taking place in Iraq."

Iraq is experiencing a wave of violence that began on Tuesday, with clashes between security forces and Sunni Arab protesters in the north that has killed more than 215 people so far.

The killings of the soldiers whose funerals were held on Sunday happened after security forces allegedly killed more than 170 protesters over the last week in attempts to crush demonstrations in numerous other cities, including Fallujah and Mosul.

The protesters have called for the resignation of Nouri al-Maliki, the prime minister, and criticised authorities for allegedly targeting the Sunni community, including what they say are wrongful detentions and accusations of involvement in terrorism.

The violence is the deadliest so far linked to demonstrations that broke out in Sunni-dominated areas of the Shia-majority country more than four months ago.

ZUBOVA POLYANA, Russia -- A Russian court on Friday rejected a plea for early release from prison by a member of the feminist punk band Pussy Riot, whose provocative songs and prosecution have made them a symbol of the country’s opposition movement.

Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, who has been in custody since her arrest last March, is serving a two-year sentence handed down after the band staged an irreverent protest against President Vladimir Putin in Moscow’s main cathedral.

[foto] A masked demonstrator attends a demonstration in support of the Russian punk group Pussy Riot, whose members face prison for a stunt against President Vladimir Putin, outside Russia's embassy in Berlin. The three female band members have been in jail for more than five months because of an anti-Putin prank in Moscow's main cathedral. A judge is due to rule on their case Friday.

[foto] Feminist punk group Pussy Riot member Nadezhda Tolokonnikova stands in a glass cage at a court room in in Moscow, Wednesday Oct. 10, 2012. A Moscow appeals court on Wednesday unexpectedly freed one of the jailed Pussy Riot members, but upheld the two-year prison sentence for the two others jailed for an irreverent protest against President Vladimir Putin.She and two other band members were sentenced to prison terms on charges of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred. She sought early release after serving half her sentence, a provision allowed by law.

Another of the convicted band members, Yekaterina Samutsevich, had her sentence suspended on appeal last year.

Tolokonnikova, dressed in a Soviet-style dark prison uniform with a white scarf around her neck, told the court that the prison colony where she is serving her sentence did not support her plea of early release because she “didn’t repent.” Russian law does not make repentance a condition for an early release.

In its deposition, the prison colony described Tolokonnikova as “insensitive to ethics and conscience and thinking only about herself.”

The prison colony also listed a penalty that Tolokonnikova received for failing to say hello to a prison official while she was in the hospital and noted that she was once reprimanded for her refusal to go out for a walk while she was held in a Moscow jail.

Defence lawyers urged the court to release Tolokonnikova so that she can take care of her 5-year-old daughter. Attorney Dmitry Dinze also complained that prison officials seem unable to provide proper conditions to treat her persistent headaches.

What you gonna do when you get out of jail? I’m gonna have some fun What do you consider fun? Fun, natural funI’m in heaven With my boyfriend, my laughing boyfriend There's no beginning and there is no end Time isn't present in that dimensionHe'll take my arm When we're walkin', rolling and rocking It's one time, I'm glad I'm not a man Feels like I'm dreaming but I'm not sleeping

I'm in heaven With the maven of funk mutation Clinton's musicians such as Bootsy Collins Raise expectations to a new intentionNo one can sing Quite like Smokey, Smokey Robinson Wailin' and skankin' to Bob Marley Reggae's expanding with Sly and Robbie

Ipsimama, ipsimama Ipsimama, ipsimama

All the weekend Boyfriend was missing, I surely miss him The way he'd hold me in his warm arms We went insane when we took cocaine

Stepping in a rhythm to a Kurtis Blow Who needs to think when your feet just go? With a hiditihi and a hipitiho Who needs to think when your feet just go

Bohannon bohannon bohannon bohannon

Who needs to think when your feet just go

Bohannon Bohannon Bohannon Bohannon

James Brown, James Brown James Brown, James Brown

If you see him Please remind him, unhappy boyfriend Well, he's the genius of love He's got a greater depth of feeling Well, he's the genius of love, he's so deep

I’m in heavenStepping in a rhythm to a Kurtis Blow Who needs to think when your feet just go?Well, he's the genius

oboy oboy thanks for the Juggalos Gathering photos! As has become obvious, us folks in the
Assisted Living Facility aren't real plugged in to Insane Clown Posse buzz or
Tweets or FB. (There's a new very viral service for sending fotos with a time
countdown -- your close pals only have 30 seconds to see your nude self-portrait
before it vanishes from the Internet forever and irretrievably.)

Keep an eye/ear open for any updates on the FBI's
designation of ICP/Juggalos as a criminal gang. I am looking at your photos
again, and if this is a gang, color me real scared.

I'm not
overly grateful that you asked me the other Serious Question.

Everybody these days is cliche-ing "It's complicated." Which is code for
crap so dysfunctional and incomprehensible and toxic that I don't want to give
myself a migraine by thinking about it or trying to figure it out.

For the past 11 days, whenever I've been incautious enough to turn on the
TV or the radio, it's been -- well, like the month-plus after 9/11, a Fiesta of
Fear & Anxiety, with big sacks of Hatred tossed in for flavor.

(I'd be real curious to know how all this is going down in Dearborn. That
poor community must be pooping its drawers, waiting for a mass Homeland Security
roundup and detention.)

So for the past 11 days, both of us have found ourselves increasingly
watching kiddie shows like "Dinosaur Train" -- if we plug into media at all,
it's strictly and carefully for "Happy Bunny Rainbow" shows with guarantees of
No Flying Severed Limbs and hot shrapnel and crowds screaming "Kill The
Muslims!" In my office I plug into YouTube and listen to symphonies and Jean-Luc
Ponty and Zappa albums. (Nerve-calming playlist on request; I'm listening to the
B52s right now. 100 percent maim-free.)

Of course the Shock & Horror is when this happens in an American city.
In Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Pakistan, Afghanistan -- and ethnic friction areas of
Russia, like Chechnya -- this sort of thing is a weekly feature of everyday
life. A big bombing at the marketplace or the other denomination's mosque --
well, for those folks, it's just same old same old.

Of course back in our Happy Youth days, if you wanted to find homemade
bomb-making fiends intent on terrorizing our American way of life, they were
current or recent students at UC Berkeley or Brandeis, I guess U-Michigan was a
good place to find some Very Angry Dangerous fiends with a little background in
chemistry. U-Wisconsin @ Madison has the sad distinction of being the last
domestic bombing death of the Vietnam era. Some pissed-off retro Maoist
anarchists blew up the Army Math Center in the middle of the night -- politely
assuming nobody was inside. One guy was inside, pulling a computer all-nighter.

Hmmm, a similarity has just zapped in some old neurons -- our same USA has
just been fighting two decades-long wars in non-white non-Christian Asia again.
Could this possibly have something to do with bomb attacks HERE?

btw Happy 4/20 -- how'd the Hash Bash go this year? I
think there was a bit of gunfire at the Big Reefer Party in Boulder, Colorado,
but I think the worst was just sort of treated-and-released small-caliber
crap.

Maybe I'll post these -- well, for want of a better word,thoughts-- on
Vleeptron. They might serve the tiny purpose of Witness -- that during a moment
of national hysteria and revenge, one old Vietnam-era hippie jerk publicly
objected to Hatred, Fear & Revenge on an industrial scale, to sell a lot of tooth whitener and hemmorhoid cream and Subarus.

Fox jerks have
been calling for an end to student visas for foreign Muslims. The American
public/political dialogue increasingly is blaming Everything on them
Satan-worshipping Jihadist Muslims.

Big crowd demanding that we stop informing
criminal suspects of their Constitutional rights, that our priority must be a
little of the old enhanced interrogation. Elsewhere the crowd screams that the
surviving suspect be processed as an enemy combatant (rather than your standard
garden-variety deranged bomber).

I seem to recall that whenever we have a whomp-butt long frustrating
overseas war against Foreign Heathen Devils, eventually some of the firearms and assault
weapons and explosive devices -- and a bunch of the anger -- find their way back
home -- even though that was strictly declared an Unintended Consequence, and we
find it shocking when it happens.

Your e-mail is making me miss "Dinosaur Train" on PBS For Kids. One of the
dinosaurs -- well, T. Rex -- talks just like Elvis, the little dinosaurs call
him The King.

Oh btw we are placing our hopes for Homeland safety on the same reliable
federal agency which is also safeguarding us from the Insane Clown Posse &
its dangerous horde of followers.

Old Hippie on Tranqs

& Medicinal Cannabis

=================

----- Original Message -----

From:

To:

Sent: Friday, April 26, 2013 9:00 AM

Subject: ICP

Hi
Bob,

Besides Insane Clown Posse, ICP also stands for International Center
of Photography. So because you are interested in all things ICP, the clown
version, here are a couple pictures.Attached are two images from a book of
photos of ICP fans I found on the web site of a UK graphic design
magazine.

Ron

PS – I thought I’d see comments on Vleeptron_Z about
the Boston bomb business.

25 April 2013

SAN FRANCISCO USA --Google on Thursday released data showing that requests by governments to censor the Internet giant's content have hit new heights, with Brazil and the United States leading the way.

Google received 2,285 government requests to remove content from it properties, including YouTube and search pages, in the second half of last year as compared to 1,811 requests in the first six months, according to its latest Transparency Report.

The requests related to 24,179 pieces of content, up from 18,070 items, the California-based Internet giant said.

"As we've gathered and released more data over time, it's become increasingly clear that the scope of government attempts to censor content on Google services has grown," Google legal director Susan Infantino said in a blog post.

"In more places than ever, we've been asked by governments to remove political content that people post on our services."

Google launched its semi-annual transparency reports three years ago, saying its intent is to "shine some light on the scale and scope of government requests for censorship and data around the globe."

In the second half of last year, Google logged notable increases in content removal requests from Brazil and Russia, and fielded inquiries from 20 countries regarding YouTube posts of clips from the controversial 'Innocence of Muslims' film, which sparked violent protests around the world.

The spike from Brazil was attributed in large part to local law banning commentary critical of candidates during elections, and all but 57 of the 697 removal requests came in the form of court orders, according to the report.

"We're appealing many of these cases, on the basis the content is protected by freedom of expression under the Brazilian Constitution," Infantino said.

Google only received 191 content removal requests from Brazil in the first half of last year, prior to the fall election season.

Requests from Russia to remove content from Google jumped from six in the first half of last year to 114 in the second half, with all but seven of them citing a law that took effect there in the fall, according to the report.

Google said that while video clips from 'Innocence of Muslims' did not violate YouTube community guidelines it restricted views in several countries to comport with local laws and temporarily blocked it in Egypt and Libya.

The United States was second to Brazil in the number of requests, filing 321 in the second half of last year, according to the report.

Germany, India, and Turkey filled out the top-five list in that order, with 231, 160, and 147 requests respectively, Google said.

18 April 2013

This Faux Needlepoint Sampler crap is LONG TEDIOUS REPETITIVE HARD WORK (which I loathe & detest). I deeply admire the devotion and determination of people who purposely choose to spend decades learning and producing this kind of Needlepoint Fabric Art --

uhhh maybe we can have lunch once or twice a year. Or every 5 years just to keep in touch. That's about how often I may have Big Needs to spend time with such Volunteer Devotees and masters of this Craft / Technique / Kraft / Fabric Art.

Which in no way lessens my admiration for the work these whackos and addled compulsive people think is a Cornucopia of Mirth & Non-Stop 24/7/365 Enjoyment ... Fun, some have been heard to describe it. Bliss. Oblivion -- the Fun Kind. Lotus Eating with exquisite Beauty coming out the ass end.

What they have made and left behind -- knowing as they made the Sampler that 98 percent of their tedious labor was doomed to be badly laundered and left out in the backyard every summer for a half-century, increasingly falling to the whims & brutal ways of small children -- is Exquisite, an unexpected assault of concentrated Beauty in your face.

On a wall or on a website, I truly am thankful for those long hours, years, decades, lifetimes of laborious, repetitive, poorly-compensated, lonely labor. (Short infrequent toilet and kitchen breaks are permitted.)

There's a lot of Art a lot easier and faster to zip to the shipping department. And quite beautiful as well as robotically clever at the shortcuts (cf. the souped-up turbosonic hyperwhamatical version of MSPaint known as Paint.net , a college/uni students' Labour of Love project, with permission and assistance from Microsoft.)

Soon we clever Earthoids will have freed ourselves forever from the enslaved Logitech trackball bonds of physical instrumentation!

We are racing to a near future when we will be able to move any size or kind of mass anywhere just by wishing it there -- We'll have developed a civilization no longer dependent on Waking Conscious Typing Fingers.

You think toast, and there's your toast, promptly served on your slightly radioactive (the vibrant color uranium glaze) Fiestaware (tm) lunch plate. I'm sure this will be a wonderful development, I see nothing but Happiness & Prosperity Ahead for the Think-It-So-Make-It-So just around the corner. How lucky our children and grandchildren will be. Is Kurt Russell still making those Snake Pliskin "Escape From" movies?

In the last year, major voices in our planet's astronomy community have testified or said in unusually candid terms that our state-of-the-art leading-edge science-based defense against life-extincting Big Fast Space Rock Smash Events (BFSRSE) is pretty much Mass Abject Knees Prayer and Virgin-Flinging.

4-Star US Air Force generals also testify about the benefits of Knees Prayer and Virgin-Flinging when Earth and human civilization face (surprisingly frequently) extinction or severe long-lasting damage, compromise, and oubreaks of cannibalism by severely Protein-Challenged neighbors and family members. Back to Ooky-Ooky times & tech.

A big problem is that Earth is Large, and Massive, and thus generates a not-inconsiderable gravity field, which now and then attracts a Big Fast Space Rock to change course along its previously harmless elliptical orbit and veer our way.

This is an appropriate time to advertise for young virgins and schedule mass prayer services.

In actual recent USA Congressional testimony, experts have suggested -- jokingly, hahaha -- that NASA put Bruce Willis on standbye status, put Bruce on SpeedDial, only Bruce Willis and his oil driller buds have the necessary experience and skills to make the Life Extincting Big Space Rock not turn Earth into Powdered Toast. (Robert Duvall & younger astronauts also saved Earth by flying an H-bomb in the Space Shuttle to snuff a Big Fast Space Rock.)

17 April 2013

Click image to enlarge plastic and organic babes.I had to go out of town, and left Agence-Vleeptron Presse in the reliable hands of my mega-pierced and multi-tatted youth associates Lenny & Spike, so everything on this post is Their Fault, not mine.

They love Barbie, and found this Huffington Post article, and a bunch of other cool Barbie stuph, and posted it according to A-VP's usual standards of journalistic excellence and public service. (They've finally mastered the entire alphabet and 3, maybe 4 punctuation marks.)

At the end of the movie "Addams Family Values,"Debbie the Nanny (the comedian Joan Cusack) has tied up the whole Addams Family, and explains why she must now gruesomely kill them.

When Debbie was a little girl, she wanted Ballerina Barbie for Christmas, but her parents bought her Malibu Barbie instead. (Gomez and Morticia are sincerely horrified and sympathize fully with the poor woman's ghastly childhood trauma.)

By the way, did you like Vleeptron's "Monday's Child" sampler? Guess what day of the week the pretty little Addams girl (Christina Ricci) was born on.

In the above image, the organic (non-plastic carbon-based) Barbie is Valeria lukyanova, whose ambition is to look exactly like Barbie.

Vleeptron admires people with Big Ambitions. You go grrl! Follow that dream!

15 April 2013

If there's a flavor or content to an e-mail you send that is hostile or hateful toward Arabs -- who are the children of my God, and thus are my sisters and brothers -- please never send me such an e-mail again. Please find a way to mass-spam your hatred, but to include me out.

Hatikvah -- I know it equally as Smetana's beautiful symphony "Die Moldau / Vltava" -- is an important and beautiful musical work, with great and significant political, historical and patriotic content.

I deeply oppose using Hatikvah as a broken beer bottle in a Jew-versus-Arab drunken saloon brawl.

The Israeli ambassador and the Minister of the Diaspora would like our National Hymn, Ha Tikva to become the most popular video on You Tube by April 16, 2013, the 65th anniversary of Israel ’s Independence Day.

Please view the Video clip, at the website listed below, and then forward it to all your contacts. The object is to place this video among the top five clips.

The Arabs, living in Palestine are trying to have this video removed .

14 April 2013

The Associated PressUSA national/international newswirepickup from Albany Times-UnionSaturday 13 April 2013New York teacher who assigned Nazi letter put on leave[photo:] Albany Public Schools Superintendent Marguerite Vanden Wyngaard speaks about a Nazi-themed assignment given to students during a news conference on Friday 12 April 2013, in Albany, N.Y. Vanden Wyngaard said a high school English teacher could face disciplinary action for giving the writing assignment that asked students to make a persuasive argument blaming Jews for the problems of Nazi Germany. [Photo: Mike Groll]

NEW YORK (AP) -- New York school district officials have placed a high school English teacher on leave for having students pretend to be Jew-hating Nazis in a writing assignment.

The teacher at Albany (New York state) High School caused a storm of criticism after having students practice the art of persuasive argument by writing a letter to a fictitious Nazi government official arguing that "Jews are evil."

District Superintendent Marguerite Vanden Wyngaard held a news conference Friday apologizing for the assignment.

The school district has not named the teacher, who was described as a veteran. Monday's assignment was brought to administrators' attention by a parent of one of the students. Some students refused to write the assignment.- 30 -

NEW YORK, 11 May -- "All the preparation you've done will finally be paying off," read the fortune in Jacquelyn W. Garrett's cookie. The prophecy caught her eye, but it was the numbers stretched across the slip of paper that paid off for her.

She played them in the Powerball lottery and won second prize.

She was not alone -- an additional 109 people used the same series of numbers to become second-prize Powerball winners in the March 30 drawing.

"We expected four or five and ended up with 110," Chuck Strutt, executive director of the Multi-State Lottery Association, said Wednesday. "That's well beyond the realm of normal possibilities."

Lottery officials at first suspected a scam or maybe a computer glitch. They did not suspect fortune cookies that would lead to the payout of, well, a fortune.

But there they were: winners in 26 of the 29 states with the lotteries, each bearing the same number series --

22, 28, 32, 33, 39, 40.Depending on the bet, each winner raked in between U$100,000 and U$500,000 -- costing the lottery association nearly U$19,000,000 it had not counted on paying out. It made for an expensive night for Powerball, with winners beating the odds in a game with a 1 in 3,000,000winning combination.

If the winners had chosen 42 instead of 40, they would have struck the U$25,000,000 jackpot. "It actually would have been better for us," said Strutt, explaining that jackpots are divided among the winners.

Garrett said she got her fortune cookie at her favorite Chinese restaurant in suburban Nashville. "I didn't recognize the numbers would mean anything," said Garrett, a schoolteacher. "I was just interested in the fact that this was something positive to me."

Lottery officials followed the fortune cookie trail, locating the distributor and then narrowing down the cookie makers to three possibilities. The New York Times on Wednesday identified the fortune cookie factory as Wonton Food, a Queens-based company that cranks out 4,000,000 fortune cookies a day.

Derrick Wong, a sales executive at Wonton Food, said the company started printing lottery numbers on fortunes 10 years ago, to distinguish itself from competitors. Numbers are randomly chosen from a big bowl, lottery style, he said.

As a vice-president at Wonton Food, Inc., in Long Island City [borough of Queens, New York], Donald Lau manages the company’s accounts payable and receivable, negotiates with insurers, and, somewhat incidentally, composes the fortunes that go inside the fortune cookies, of which Wonton is the world’s largest manufacturer. Each day, Wonton’s factory churns out 4,000,000 Golden Bowl-brand cookies, which are sold to several hundred venders, who, in turn, sell them to most of the 40,000 Chinese restaurants across the country. Wonton’s primacy in the industry and, for that matter, in the gambler’s imagination is such that when, in March, five of six lucky numbers printed on a fortune happened to coincide with the winning picks for the Powerball lottery, a hundred and ten people, instead of the usual handful, came forward to claim prizes of around a hundred thousand dollars.

Lottery officials suspected a scam until they traced the sequence to a fortune printed with the digits “22-28-32-33-39-40” and Donald Lau’s prediction: “All the preparation you’ve done will finally be paying off.”“We’ve had winners before, but never this many,” Lau said the other day, in his East Williamsburg office, which is furnished with stacks of financial reports and “A Dictionary of American Proverbs.” “A computer picks the numbers, not me. If only a computer could also write the fortunes.” Lau never expected to become a fortune-cookie writer. After graduating from Columbia [University, New York City] with degrees in engineering and business, he joined Bank of America, then ran a company that exported logs from the Pacific Northwest to China.

In the early eighties, he was hired by a Chinatown noodle manufacturer, which eventually expanded into fortune cookies. The firm bought the Long Island City plant, and it soon became apparent that its antiquated catalogue of fortunes would have to be updated. (“Find someone as gay as you are,” one leftover from the nineteen-forties read.) “We knew we needed to add new sayings,” Lau said. “I was chosen because my English was the best of the group, not because I’m a poet.”

At first, the writing came easily. Finding inspiration in sources ranging from the I Ching to the Post [NYC tabloid newspaper], Lau cranked out three or four maxims a day, between scrutinizing spreadsheets and monitoring the company’s inventory of chow mein.

“I’d be on the subway and look up at the signs and think, Hey, that would make a great fortune,” he said. (One such adage: “Beware of odors from unfamiliar sources.”) “I’d keep a small notebook and jot down whatever came to me. I don’t think I ever sat in front of the computer and said, ‘I am going to write ten fortunes right now.’ It has to come naturally.”

Love, riches, power: there is a limited range of experience that can be expressed in one sentence, and, about eleven years into his tenure, Lau began to run out of ideas. He leaned increasingly on traditional Chinese sayings, which offer insight (along the lines of “True gold fears no fire”) but not foresight (“Your income will increase”), and in 1995 he gave up altogether. “I’ve written thousands of fortunes, but the inspiration is gone,” Lau said. “Have you heard of writer’s block? That is what happened to me.”

These days, he cycles selections from his vast oeuvre in and out of circulation. He is worried that readers will notice that the cookies are in reruns, which might result in Wonton’s losing its edge on the competition. (This is unlikely. Although there are about forty fortune-cookie companies in the United States, few have Wonton’s manufacturing capabilities.)

So Lau has decided to bring in new blood. The company will soon advertise for a new fortune writer, and Lau will make the transition to editor. “Maybe when I retire I’ll write again—perhaps a book about writing fortunes,” he said. Returning to form, he summarized the thrust of the book with two simple axioms. “Don’t have too complicated a mind,” he said. “Think in ten-word sentences.”

UK: Saudi paralysis sentence 'grotesque' The UK has urged Saudi Arabia not to carry out a reported sentencing of paralysis for a Saudi man as punishment for paralysing another man.

A Foreign Office spokesperson said London was "deeply concerned" by the sentence, describing it as "grotesque."

Such punishment was "prohibited under international law," the official added.

Saudi media reports earlier said the 24-year-old man could be paralysed from the waist down if he could not pay his victim £250,000 (U$376,349)in compensation.Ali al-Khawahir was 14 when he stabbed a friend in the back in the Eastern Province town of al-Ahsa. He has been in prison for 10 years.

The judge in the case has reportedly interpreted the Islamic law of qisas, or retribution, that Saudi Arabia follows as meaning that he in turn could face being paralysed.

Amnesty International has described this as tantamount to torture.

The sentencing is the latest example of Saudi Arabia's fundamentalist interpretation of Islamic law attracting international criticism.

BBC diplomatic correspondent Jonathan Marcus says the Foreign and Commonwealth Office's comments mark an unusually strong plea to the Saudi authorities in what is, by any standards, an unusual and disturbing case.

Successive British governments have struggled at times to harmonise their concerns about human rights in Saudi Arabia with the fact that the Kingdom remains a key ally and a major customer for British weaponry, he adds.- 30 -===============Related Stories

North Korea's official Twitter and Flickr accounts have been hacked, reportedly as part of "hacktivist" group Anonymous's efforts to disrupt the Communist country's Web presence.

The attackers targeted North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in a series of tweets and photos that portray him in a less-than-flattering light.

Five tweets from @uriminxok were sent between 10:45 and 11:20 p.m. Wednesday. Most included a simple message -- "Hacked" -- accompanied by links to various North Korean websites. One said "Tango Down" with a link to the country's Flickr page.

The group uploaded four images to North Korea's official Flickr photostream, including a fake "Wanted" poster, depicting Jong-un with pig ears and a snout, and text that said:

"Threatening world peace with ICBMs and Nuclear weapons/Wasting money while his people starve to death/ Concentration Camps and the worst human rights violation in the world."

The photo offers a bogus $1,000,000 reward.

Anonymous contended in a Wednesday Pastebin message that they have "a few guys on the ground" in North Korea, who "managed to bring the real internet into the country using a chain of long distance Wi-Fi repeaters with proprietary frequencies, so they're not jammed (yet)." The group said it also has access to North Korean landlines that connected to Kwangmyong, the country's national Intranet.

"To the citizens of North Korea we suggest to rise up and bring those mother******s of a oppressive government down!" Anonymous wrote. "We are holding your back and your hand, while you take the journey to freedom, democracy and peace. Do not fear us, we are not terrorist, we are the good guys from the internet."

The group also has some more low-brow aspirations with its hacks. "We gonna inject the kittens and porn into their network," the hackers wrote, "because North Korean citizens wanna see lulzy kittehs and hawt pr0n too."

The group also claimed to have hacked Uriminzokkiri.com, allegedly stealing more than 15,000 passwords from the news outlet. The North Korean website is currently offline.

Tensions in the Asian country remain high, as North Korea today threatened the U.S. by authorizing its military to conduct a nuclear strike, Bloomberg reported.- 30 -

03 April 2013

Dear Merciful Lord, help me. I have been unhealthily obsessed with Adam Strange and his trips -- about 4 or 5 a year is my hazy recollection -- on the Zeta Beam from boring old Earth (where he is an architect or an archeologist, I forget which) to Rann, a planet on the far side of our Melkweg Galaxy, where resides his intergalactic sweety-pie Alanna (she's hot, he ain't zapping to the far side of Melkweg for any meiskeit), since --

Well, okay, here's how long. Since comic books cost 10 US cents each. Does that give you some idea how long I have been hung up on Adam Strange? I would give the store guy 10 USA cents -- one thin dime, 10 copper Lincoln pennies -- and he would give me the latest issue of "Mystery in Space" featuring Adam Strange.

Why isn't really a particularly profound Mystery in Space. I grew up and was imprisoned in Washington DC USA, and spent about 18 years screaming GET ME THE FUCK OUT OF HERE NOW at the top of my lungs, but no one listened sufficiently closely, and there were Laws about how long I was The Property of Older People, and Laws about how soon I could stop going to school, and there was no whaling industry in the USA anymore, so I didn't even have the traditional & historical option of running off to New Bedford, Massachusetts and asking helpful whalers and sailors if they could get me a Cabin Boy gig on the next wooden sailing ship heading for Polynesia or The Southern Oceans or Post Office Bay in the Galapagos/ las Encantadas. Historically, that ship had sailed; running away to sea was no longer an option for Little Bobby.

Now let me tell you about Adam Strange. He was stuck on this dumb boring one-horse planet just like Little Bobby. He had a good job, a career, professional respect, he probably drove a Mercury or maybe a Studebaker -- he was doing perfectly okay on Earth.

Then one day in the middle of the Gobi Desert, or in a laundromat, or a parking garage (strolling toward his Studebaker), he gets zapped bigtime by some incredibly powerful blinding energy blast and the next thing he knows he is hurtling across the Melkweg a gazillion times faster than light, and finally wham! he is on this other planet, Rann.

He doesn't know how it happened, he didn't even ask for it to happen, he never expected it to happen,

But HE HAS GOT THE FUCK OUT OF HERE. He is Somewhere Else. REALLY Somewhere Else. This ain't no laundromat, this ain't no parking garage, this ain't no party, this ain't no disco, this ain't no fooling around *. Adam Strange is OUTTA HERE. Earth is major bigtime grossezeit In His Rear View Window.

He ain't got no idea what the hell goes on on this Rann place **, but he groks instantly that whatever's going on, this is the place he got to make all future deals with, pretty much on Rann's terms, Rann Rules, Rann Customs & Traditions, Rann Laws of Physics & Sportsmanship, Rann Sex & Romance Customs & Taboos ... He very wisely makes his new mantra: When in Rann, do as the Rann Humanoid Entities Do.

Rann et environs is a pretty rough neighborhood -- sort of a mix of Tiajuana, Kaliningrad, Hamburg, Marseilles, Tallin, Bangkok, Montserrat during and after the Surprise Volcano Eruption, and that big meltdown part of Somalia which in recent decades has adopted Ocean Piracy as its chief economic activity.

Rann turns out to be a real Eat Or Be Eaten kind of place, and there's a new and unexpected Monster Krazy Life-Threatening Planet-Extincting Krisis every goddam new issue (10 cents!).

Adam Strange is up to it.

I don't know where he went in Ranagar (the capital of Rann) to get that awesome nifty new red soot he flies around Rann on his jet pack in -- he first landed on Rann wearing his regular laudromat or archeologist threads, maybe penny loafers -- but he gets the new red soot, and some sort of blaster sidearm which is useful when confronted by a Znarg, or a Vermicious Knid, and he starts keeping company with this E-Ticket Hot Number babe Alanna.

(She's the daughter of the whack boffin Sardath what invented the Zeta Beam and for its first test, aimed it at Earth, and specifically the laundromat where Adam Strange was doing his laundry.)

Look, I would REALLY appreciate hearing from you if YOU have a previous, long-standing relationship with either Adam Strange, Alanna, Rann, or the Zeta Beam.

(I don't care if you have a long relationship with laundromats, or, as I finally figured out when i had a backpack full of filthy clothes in Amsterdam, a wassallon. You can Leave A Comment about your experiences in the laundromat, but I DON'T CARE.)

I think they've made maybe one or two crappy cheap movies-made-for-TV of Adam Strange. They sucked.

Adam Strange doesn't suck. And Rann on the Zeta Beam with a red soot and a blaster sidearm and a flying jet pack -- well, I mean -- that just beats the living shit out of running away to sea on a whaling ship to las Encantadas!

=============

from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia

=============Adam Strangeis a fictional superhero published by DC Comics. Created by editor Julius Schwartz with a costume designed by Murphy Anderson, he first appeared in Showcase #17 (November 1958).

In May 2011, Adam Strange placed 97th on IGN's Top 100 Comic Book Heroes of All Time.

Publication history

In 1957, DC Comics editorial director Irwin Donenfeld held a meeting with editors Jack Schiff and Julius Schwartz in his office, asking them each to create a new science fiction hero: one from the present, and one from the future. Given first pick, Schiff chose to create one from the future (Space Ranger). However, Schwartz was happy with the pick, feeling that readers would more readily identify with a hero from the present. He conceived the idea of an Earth man repeatedly traveling to a planet in the Alpha Centauri star system using a Zeta-beam altered by space radiation, and named his character Adam after the first man on Earth, since Adam Strange was the first Earthman on another planet.[1]

Adam Strange debuted in issues #17-19 of the tryout series Showcase, published November 1958-March 1959. The first artwork of the character was a cover for Showcase #17 by Murphy Anderson; though Schwartz rejected the drawing and commissioned a new one by Gil Kane, Anderson's costume design was retained.[1] Schwartz then assigned the scribing of the stories to Gardner Fox and the penciling to Mike Sekowsky.[2] Schwartz and Fox devised the plots for the stories in Schwartz's office, and Fox would write the scripts at home. A science major, Schwartz specialized in giving Fox scientific pointers that gave the Adam Strange tales a plausibility that made them stand out from most science fiction of the time.[1]

Sales on the three-issue Showcase tryout were enough to justify giving Adam Strange a slot in Mystery in Space, which ran in isssues #53-100 and 102. Though Schwartz and Fox continued their work on the character, Schwartz gave the penciler assignment to Carmine Infantino instead of Sekowsky. Most issues were inked by Murphy Anderson (although Bernard Sachs, Joe Giella and Sid Greene did a few issues each). In the Justice League of America comic book, the Flash mentioned Adam Strange as a possible new member for the Justice League. When a letter to the editor pointed out the group had not met Adam Strange and could not have heard of him, as all his heroics took place on Rann, Schwartz and Fox wrote a story showing how the Justice League came to Rann and how Adam Strange saved them from Kanjar Ro. The story was published in Mystery in Space #75 and won the Alley Award for the "Best Book-Length Story" of 1962.

As of #92, Jack Schiff replaced Schwartz as editor of Mystery in Space and Lee Elias became the artist for Adam Strange. Following the discontinuation of the Adam Strange stories, reprints were presented in Strange Adventures #217 through 244 (except for #222, which instead has a new story with Strange, written by Denny O'Neil, while #226 has a new Strange text story, by Fox, with illustrations by Anderson).

Through the 1970s, the character was a regular presence in the DC Universe despite having no series of his own. In the 1980s, Alan Moore wrote a retcon of Adam Strange's reason for his visits to Rann. In this retcon, the population of the planet, the majority of whom view the Terran with contempt, is sterile, and Adam Strange is there to be a breeding stud. In a 1990 limited series, The Man of Two Worlds, Adam learns of the population's opinion of him and Alanna dies giving birth to their daughter Aleea. In JLA #20 (July 1998), Alanna is revealed to be alive, and is briefly reunited with her husband and daughter before Adam is transported back to Earth.Fictional character biography

Strange is an archeologist suddenly teleported from Peru, Earth to the fictional planet Rann through a "Zeta-Beam". Upon his arrival, he is attacked by one of the planet's predators and rescued by a blue-haired woman called Alanna. She takes him to her father Sardath, who explains that the Zeta-Beam was transmitted at Earth in the hopes that whatever form of intelligent life lived there would trace it back to Rann, and theorizes that in the 4.3 years it takes the Zeta-Beam to reach earth, it was altered by space radiation into a transportation beam. Called on to protect the planet from extraterrestrial threats using Rann's technology, Strange grew to care for the planet and its inhabitants, especially Alanna. Eventually, the effects of the beam wore off, automatically returning Strange to Earth at the exact point of departure, but not before Sardath had given him a schedule of beam firings allowing him to periodically return to the planet. Using mathematical calculations, he was able to determine the exact time and locations the Zeta-Beams would arrive at. He travels the world and intercepts them, to defend Rann and be with Alanna.[3]

Justice League of America

During Grant Morrison's revival of the Justice League of America series, Mark Waid featured Adam Strange when he filled in for Morrison. Adam Strange kidnaped the entirety of the Justice League and put them to forced labor to reconstruct Rann, as part of a ruse to rescue Alanna and her father. Strange returned to Rann in JLA: Heaven's Ladder (2000) and presumably reunited with his family shortly after.

Planet Heist

Planet Heist, a 2004 eight-issue limited series, written by Andy Diggle, penciled by Pasqual Ferry and colored by Dave McCaig, replaced Adam Strange's costume with a spacesuit that allows for interstellar travel. Adam was prepared to relocate to Rann permanently when he was informed that the planet was destroyed and that he was blamed for its destruction. In fact, Sardath transported Rann to another dimension to save the planet from the cosmic being Starbreaker. Adam, with the help of the Omega Men and the Darkstars, among others, saved Rann and defeated the evil being.

Rann-Thanagar WarMain article: Rann-Thanagar War

When Rann was moved, its orbit was believed to have pushed the planet Thanagar closer to its sun, destroying much of the surface (it was later discovered that the actions of Superboy-Prime moved Thanagar). Many Thanagarians were relocated to Rann, but enmity between the two races resulted in a war, depicted in Rann-Thanagar War- Strange working with Hawkman, Hawkwoman, Kyle Rayner and Kilowog to try to end the conflict-, a six-issue precursor to DC's 2005 to 2006 limited series and DC crossover event, Infinite Crisis. Strange was eventually able to end the war when he discovered evidence of Superboy-Prime's role in Thanagar's relocation.

52Main article: 52 (comic book)

Adam was stranded on a paradise-like planet with Animal Man and Starfire. As a result of a teleportation accident involving the Zeta-Beam, he lost both of his eyeballs but in spite of his injuries, he tried to fix a damaged spaceship so that they may return home.[4] After being attacked by Devilance the Pursuer, they eventually escaped having realized that the entire planet is a trap.

This ragtag team made a stand against the villainess Lady Styx, whose undead legions were ravaging planets across the galaxy. With Styx presumably defeated and Animal Man seemingly killed, Strange and Starfire continued their journey back to Earth and Rann, still pursued by angry Lady Styx followers. With Starfire wounded in one of such battles, and their ship breaking apart and malfunctioning, Adam was saved by Mogo and a rookie Green Lantern. Brought to Rann, Strange was equipped with new eyes, cloned by Aleea and genetically engineered to grant him vision of the entire electromagnetic spectrum. He was briefly questioned by the Green Lantern Corps about the secret of 52, but when an emergency arose during the interrogation, the Lanterns offered to respond in Strange's stead so he could be reacquainted with his wife.

Countdown to Adventure

Adam Strange joined Animal Man and Starfire in the series Countdown to Adventure written by Adam Beechen in August 2007.

In issue #1, Adam finds himself replaced as Rann's protector by Champ Hazard, a former actor from Earth. However, Hazard has no regard for any life and is responsible for ending his battles in a horrifically bloody way. It appears Champ was infected by a madness plague created by Lady Styx before leaving Earth, and has infected one third of the people on Rann, causing them to riot and say "Believe in Her." Adam and his family escape to Earth, where he enlists the aid of Animal Man and Starfire, eventually discovering a way to cure the plague and restore the infectees to normal.Rann-Thanagar Holy War

Adam Strange, along with many of the DC space heroes including Hawkman, Starfire, The Weird, and the Prince Gavyn Starman , battles Synnar the Demiurge. Adam Strange's actions in this story result in the depopulation of Prince Gavyn's Throneworld at the hands of Lady Styx. Later, to defeat Synnar and Lady Styx, Rann's atmosphere was explosively discharged into outer space with Rann's entire population Zeta-beamed to Throneworld. Strange also discovers in this story that he is a member of the so called Aberrant Six.

Strange Adventures

With Throneworld renamed New Rann, Adam Strange once more teams up with the DC space heroes to investigate why some of the galaxy's stars are disappearing. It is discovered from the future spirit of Synnar that he is destined to be one of 'The Aberrant Six', a group critical to preventing the Synnar of today (trapped in The Weird's body) from destroying the universe. Ultimately the Aberrant Six did not form and the future Synnar was forced to leave, but not before Captain Comet's mercenary friend Eye was killed by Synnar's supreme god-enemy to prevent the forming of the Six. Comet was entrusted with Eye's robot companion Orb until she returns, told by Synnar that when that happens he will "continue his negotiations - All has changed, but remains as it was". Adam Strange realizes that one day Synnar will return and force him to join his Aberrant Six.R.E.B.E.L.S.

Adam Strange then found himself joining up with Vril Dox as part of his R.E.B.E.L.S.. Adam Strange helped to save the Vega system and several galaxies by defeating Starro the Conqueror. It was also around this time that Adam Strange visited New Krypton to protest the accord that their Council reached with the Thanagarians. Explaining that the Rannians have recently been on the losing end in a war with the Thanagarians, Adam questions the judgment of the Council in reaching this accord. Whilst there he aided Superman who was investigating a murder.

The plight of Rann's people was soon resolved by Vril Dox, seeking to restore his reputation after Starro the Conqueror stole L.E.G.I.O.N. from him and used it to enslave its client worlds. Dox Zeta-beamed Rann into the Vega system, in the orbit previously held by the now destroyed planet Tamaran, and proceeded to terraform Rann and make it suitable to sustain life again.

The restoration of the planet Rann wasn't Dox's only reason for relocating it into the Vega system. First, by putting Rann into Tamaran's orbit, it restored the gravitional balance to the Vega system, which had been thrown off by Tamaran's destruction. Secondly, in exchange for restoring their planet, the people of Rann agreed to let Dox rebuild L.E.G.I.O.N. headquarters on Rann.

Tamaranian refugees, led by Blackfire, attacked Rann believing that since the planet was in Tamaran's orbit they had claim to it. The violence was ended when Vril Dox, who was off-world at the start of the conflict, arrived with Thanagarian warships and stopped the fighting without bloodshed on either side. As it turned out, Dox was off-world negotiating an official end to the Rann-Thanagar War, using Rann's new-found distance from Thanagar and change in leadership on both sides as leverage.

Dox then went on to mediate the tension between the Rannians and the Tamaranians by proposing that the Tamaranians live on Rann's uninhabited southern continent.

Adam Strange as well as protector of Rann would also become a senior commander of L.E.G.I.O.N. ensuring peace with the Green Lantern Corps. He also helped create an alliance between Rannians, Tamaranians and L.E.G.I.O.N. after defeating Starro the Conqueror, ensuring security for Rann, the Vega System and the galaxy.

Other versions

Adam Strange has a descendant, also named Adam Strange, in the future of the Space Ranger, as seen in Mystery in Space #94 (September 1964).

The Silver Age Adam Strange is one of the "ghosts" in the empty "Planet Krypton" restaurant in The Kingdom: Planet Krypton #1.

Adam Strange made a brief appearance in Elseworlds' JLA: Another Nail when all time periods meld together. In the original series JLA: The Nail, he is found dead in Earth orbit by Hal Jordan after the Zeta Beam taking him to Rann was blocked by a force field surrounding Earth.

In Darwyn Cooke's DC: The New Frontier, Adam Strange is confined in Arkham Asylum because of his belief he has traveled to another world. It is also revealed this was done so the government can keep an eye on him. When the Centre appears off the coast of Florida, Dr. Leslie Thompkins returns his jet pack and energy weapon to him. It is Adam's idea to use Ray Palmer's shrinking device to destroy the threat, having read an article about his work while confined.

The 2009 weekly comics broadsheet Wednesday Comics featured an interpretation of Adam Strange by artist and writer Paul Pope that drew much more directly from the John Carter stories which inspired the character, casting the planet Rann as a much more fantasy-like world, and Alanna as a scantily clad warrior princess.[5]

In other media

Television

In the TV series Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, during the episode "The Plot To Kill a City: Episode 2" (written by Alan Brennert, who had also written comics for DC) an announcement over a spaceport's loudspeaker system asks for "Doctor Adam Strange from Alpha Centauri" to "please report to the reservations desk."

Adam Strange appears in the Batman: The Brave and the Bold episode "Mystery in Space" voiced by Michael T. Weiss. Batman is called over to Adam's home planet and he brings Aquaman as well. All three alongside Adam Strange's wife Alanna go in to stop the Gordanians led by General Kreegaar from obtaining the Eye of Zared from the bottom of Rann's oceans. Before he can get his wife away from the Gordanians, the effects of the Zeta Ray wears off sending him to Earth. He had to trace another one to get back to Rann only to find out that Rann is now in danger. After the enemy successfully gets the Eye of Zared and starts attacking, Adam Strange starts to have his doubts. His confidence is rekindled by Aquaman, and he goes in to save Alanna, and buy Aquaman and Batman some time to create a solar eclipse to stop the Eye of Zared forcing General Kreegaar's army to surrender. In the series' third season, Adam appears in one of four vignettes in "Four Star Spectacular!", titled "World's War." He is preparing to return to Rann with an anniversary present for his wife when he witnesses dozens of Zeta Beams strike Gotham City. Adam allows himself to be teleported and discovers that Kanjar Ro plans to intercept a Zeta Beam, teleport a negaton bomb to Rann, wipe out the population, and use the planet as a base of operations. The hero manages to teleport Kanjar Ro and his bomb to a swamp world, and the space pirate disarms the bomb just in time, only to run afoul of an alien monster.

Adam Strange appears in Young Justice: Invasion episode "Happy New Year" voiced by Michael Trucco.[6] Besides his history of ending up on Rann, he tells the team that Rann has a bounty on all Justice Leaguers after some of them were controlled by Vandal Savage to attack Rimbor. He and Alanna are also in "Earthlings" where they help Superboy, Miss Martian, and Beast Boy in their efforts to find the rogue Kroloteans and their Zeta Ray technology by distracting Rannian authorities and fighting the armored Kroloteans. In "Salvage", Adam activates a Zeta Shield to cover Earth and protect it from future alien invasions.

Film

Adam Strange appears briefly in Justice League: The New Frontier. He is glimpsed in one of John Jones' news clippings early on in the film. During the climax, he is one of the heroes who answers the call to fight the Centre, but has no speaking role.

A film is currently in development hell, but the film is being produced by Leonardo DiCaprio and is expected to be released either 2013 or 2014. [7]

Video game

Adam Strange appears in the DC Universe Online video game.

Awards and reception

The character and series of the same name have received several awards over the years, including the 1967 and 1968 Alley Awards for Strip Most Desired for Revival. IGN ranked Adam Strange as the 97th greatest comic book hero of all time stating that "If by fluke we were given the chance to ride a Zeta Beam[sic] into space, meet a sexy alien princess[sic] on the planet Rann, and fight extraterrestrial threats with high-tech weaponry, I[sic] wouldn’t want to go back to mundane Earth-life either. That makes us completely sympathetic to Adam Strange’s plight."[8]